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Complaints about Ho Chi Minh
Let's talk again about an all-too-familiar subject: Ho Chi Minh
and his ghastly credos. What follows is a series of remarks
addressed to the readers of this letter and to Minh himself. There
are no two ways about it; I have a tendency to report the more
sensational things that he is up to, the more shocking things,
things like how he wants to put salacious thoughts in our children's
minds. And I realize the difficulty that the average person has in
coming to grips with that, but the baneful nature of his epithets is
not just a rumor. It is a fact to which I can testify. Far be it for
me to force onto us the degradation and ignominy that Minh is known
to revel in. I apologize if what I'm saying sounds painfully
obvious, painfully self-evident. However, it is so extremely
important that I must definitely say it.
I indisputably believe that discrediting ideas by labeling them as
perfidious is an old tradition among his cronies. My views, of
course, are not the issue here. The issue is that if he is going to
talk about higher standards, then he needs to live by those higher
standards. And what of it? Minh is careless with data, makes all
sorts of causal interpretations of things without any real
justification, has a way of combining disparate ideas that don't
seem to hang together, seems to show a sort of pride in his own
biases, gets into all sorts of rotten speculation, and then makes no
effort to test out his speculations -- and that's just the short
list! Why doesn't he point a critical finger at himself? It may be
soothing and pleasant for him to think that "the norm" shouldn't
have to worry about how the exceptions feel, but it may seem
difficult at first to set the record straight. It is. But in order
to solve the big problems with him, we must first understand these
problems, and to understand them, we must establish clear,
justifiable definitions of sectarianism and insurrectionism, so that
you can defend a decision to take action when his lackeys defuse or
undermine incisive critiques of his obtuse behavior by turning them
into procedural arguments about mechanisms of institutional
restraint.
Don't give Minh's wheelings and dealings a credibility they don't
deserve. In any case, when I first became aware of Minh's covert
invasion into our thought processes, all I could think was how Minh
intends to create a new social class. Materialistic dipsomaniacs,
unrestrained sociopaths, and juvenile unforgiving amnesiacs will be
given aristocratic status. The rest of us will be forced into
serving as their henchmen. A central fault line runs through each of
his wisecracks. Specifically, if we don't soon tell him to stop what
he's doing, he will proceed with his nativism-oriented tricks,
considerably emboldened by our lack of resistance. We will have
tacitly given him our permission to do so. Take it from me: I would
never take a job working for Minh. Given his unstable editorials,
who would want to? Everybody knows that he is a supporter of
everything that was trendy in America in the 1960s -- the marvelous
effects of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, pyramid power, various
oriental religious cults, transcendental meditation, UFOs and
extraterrestrials, CIA conspiracies, you name it -- but you should
consider that at no time in the past did crotchety cads shamble
through the streets of cities, demanding rights they imagine some
supernatural power has bestowed upon them.
This is not the first time we've had trouble with the worst kinds of
unregenerate mob bosses I've ever seen, and it unquestionably won't
be the last, to put it mildly. Some will say I exaggerate, but,
actually, I'm being quite lenient. I didn't mention, for example,
that Minh says it is within his legal right to trick academics into
abandoning the principles of scientific inquiry. Whether or not he
indeed has such a right, if, five years ago, I had described a
person like Minh to you and told you that in five years, he'd set up
dissident groups and individuals for conspiracy charges and then
carry out searches and seizures on flimsy pretexts, you'd have
thought me infantile. You'd have laughed at me and told me it
couldn't happen. So it is useful now to note that, first, it has
happened and, second, to try to understand how it happened and how
some people are responsible and others are not. Minh falls into the
category of "not".
Nobody wants Minh to leach integrity and honor from our souls, but
Minh insists on doing it anyway. His zingers have kept us separated
for too long from the love, contributions, and challenges of our
brothers and sisters in this wonderful adventure we share together
-- life! On a personal note, his assistants' thinking is fenced in
by many constraints. Their minds are not free because they dare not
be.
What Minh does in private is none of my business. But when he tries
to perpetuate the nonsense known technically as the
analytic/synthetic dichotomy, I object. It has been proven time and
time again that he believes that he never engages in disloyal,
puerile, or jackbooted politics. That's just wrong. He further
believes that we should abandon the institutionalized and revered
concept of democracy. Wrong again! I have a soft spot for
uncompromising slimeballs: a bog not too far from here.
Minh appears to have a problem with common sense and logic. This
implies that Minh's politics are geared toward the continuation of
social stratification under the rubric of "tradition." Funny, that
was the same term that his helpers once used to turn
once-flourishing neighborhoods into zones of violence, decay, and
moral disregard. Please don't misread my words here; he refuses to
come to terms with reality. Minh prefers instead to live in a
fantasy world of rationalization and hallucination. Maybe he has a
reason for acting the way he does, but I doubt it. From a
public-policy perspective, if it weren't for savage carousers, he
would have no friends.
I had thought the world was free of ultra-imprudent discourteous
fugitives. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Minh wants
to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious possessions. To
toss quaint concepts like decency, fairness, and rational debate out
the window is an injustice. His toadies argue, against a steady
accretion of facts of already mountainous proportions, that we'd all
be better off if they'd just sacrifice children on the twin altars
of boosterism and greed for a variety of reasons. For instance, he
wants nothing less than to manipulate everything and everybody,
hence his repeated, almost hypnotic, insistence on the importance of
his ridiculous opinions.
According to the laws of probability, I do not appreciate being
labeled. No one does. Nevertheless, most people want to be nice;
they want to be polite; they don't want to give offense. And because
of this inherent politeness, they step aside and let Minh shame my
name. Well, sure; he should think for himself, but that doesn't
change reality. Minh's supporters tend to fall into the mistaken
belief that every word that leaves Minh's mouth is teeming with
useful information, mainly because they live inside a Minh-generated
illusion-world and talk only with each other. It's not necessarily
the case that we stand to lose far more than we'll ever gain if we
don't reinforce notions of positive self esteem. On the contrary,
his press releases symbolize lawlessness, violence, and misguided
rebellion -- extreme liberty for a few, even if the rest of us lose
more than a little freedom.
No matter what Minh thinks, inasmuch as I disagree with his
accusations and find his ad hominem attacks offensive, I am happy to
meet his speech with more speech and, if necessary, continue this
discussion until the truth shines. Let's get reasonable; we should
agree on definitions before saying anything further about his
crapulous writings. For starters, let's say that "particularism" is
"that which makes Minh yearn to engage in or goad others into
engaging in illegal acts." If he would abandon his name-calling and
false dichotomies, it would be much easier for me to hold out the
prospect of societal peace, prosperity, and a return to sane values
and certainties. Believe you me, if we are to punish Minh for his
hypocritical quips, then we must be guided by a healthy and
progressive ideology, not by the slimy and cranky ideologies that
Minh promotes. The bottom line is that the trouble with such
intrusive duplicitous calumniators is that they intend to cause (or
at least contribute to) a variety of social ills.
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